THE Most Important Part of Wedding Planning

Part of the requirements for getting married at St. Paul's includes pre-marital counseling. The pastor who will be marrying us in October meets with us about four times prior to the rehearsal (which requires a dinner afterwards...Gary).

During our recent meeting the pastor reviewed the 38-page, multiple choice test. Since G and I were not allowed to share answers, this was the first time I was hearing how he felt about me, my parents, the government, religion, kids, etc. The pastor quickly scanned the pages, searching for some sign of potential conflict between our answers. I marked that I enjoyed outdoor recreational activities, so did G. I said that I was willing to clean the dishes if G was willing to cook. G wrote the same on his version. The pastor looked terrified that this was going to be the most boring counseling session ever.

I think the biggest discrepancy is that I would like to have 2 children and G would like to have 2 sons. The pastor tried to explain to him that this is not a drive-thru; you cannot place a gender order. sigh.

It turns out that G and I have had many "in depth" (that was a category, the other one was "shallow") conversations about many things: his childhood, my future plans, his college friends, my future plans, and even how we feel about money. I attribute this to long car rides to/from his parent's house. I think the point of this test was to root out any conflicts and analyze them. G and I agree on almost everything. To save us from being totally boring, we do disagree on fun things like who should be President and why Catholicism may or may not be the "one true faith."

We have had arguments to be sure. But after the argument was over (either several hours or a day later) I took it upon myself to bring up the situation (ATTN BRIDES, you'll want to read this as it is just as important as all the glitzy stuff you're doing for your wedding which lasts ONE DAY.) "So, do you remember when we were driving around and you were upset with me?" I asked him. "Yes," he replied. "You were driving me a little nuts." He was being kind. "Why specifically was I driving you nuts?"

Asking him this was like scrapping my own nails down a chalkboard. It is so unromantic to rehash a fight. But I know from experience that if you let these moments pass by without both of you being consciously aware of why you did what you did and why you said what you said, it causes bigger problems later. I wouldn't do this every time we argued but since this rarely happens, I felt led to bring it up.

"Because you didn't know where you were going or where we were supposed to be meeting your friend and there's no parking and I was hungry and we were running late." Not that he didn't already know this, but I was compelled to tell him I spend about 90% of my life not knowing where I'm going and/or running late. Despite my best efforts, I didn't see that changing post-vows. I winced as I asked the next question, "Are you sure there wasn't something I did earlier in the day that upset you and it just came out through our searching for parking/running late?" I've found that anytime I didn't want to know the answer to something, I didn't ask the question. Clearly, because I didn't want to know. How many times has THAT come back to haunt me? Tons.

There was, in fact, something I did earlier in the day that set him off. And rightly so. It was too small and tedious to go into, but I did something truly annoying. Something, according to my sister, that I tend to do a lot. Rats. "I'm sorry," I told him. "Not for running late when we were meeting my friend, but for being annoying earlier. I'll try to work on that because I know that it's something that I tend to do." Ugh. I didn't need a marriage test to show me that I'm not perfect. I just needed G to acknowledge that he would love me anyway.

One word of caution when reviewing these arguments: do so sparingly. Only when you're really baffled by a disagreement. I also avoid phrases like "honey, we need to talk about something," and "something you said really bothered me, but we'll talk about it later." Both considered psychological affronts in Manland.

One thing that seemed to be missing from this test was a large section on finances. Since money tends to be the number one reason for divorce, I would think that "in depth" questions about how we see the funds would have gotten more play. Next time, the pastor said. Awesome. Onto the fun stuff....